Biography

Photo:
Carmen Chan for Cereal Magazine

Brooklyn-based artist Landon Metz has garnered critical attention for his ability to imbue a spare language of abstraction with visual dynamism and sense of movement. His paintings have the capacity to expand and deal with space serially, while being site-responsive rather than site-specific. Metz’s painting practice is marked by great sensitivity to site and scale and increasingly incorporates performance and sculptural approaches to activate space. Sean Kelly stated, “We are delighted that Landon is joining the gallery. We worked with him in a group show approximately a year ago, and were profoundly impressed by his rigor, use of space, and the way his work is pushing the boundaries of contemporary language and abstraction.”

Strategies of display are central to Metz’s visual language and his installations often incorporate elements of rhythm and repetition. Frequently in his work multi-panel paintings are presented as diptychs and triptychs, which he sometimes installs abutting one another, reaching into or wrapping around corners. He also produces shaped canvasses that mimic the abstract shapes that appear in his other paintings. As Metz has observed, “My practice is largely about breaking down polarities, and I think that’s apparent in the way I present space. It’s about negotiating between setting and subject, public and private.”

Metz’s work has appeared in solo exhibitions in Norway, Italy, Denmark and Canada. In 2014, he was the artist in residence at the ADN Collection in Bolzano, Italy. Metz was born in Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.